


sing sweetly the names of our dead

by beeperinobeep



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, F/F, Furry, Sickfic, also sorry for yall scrounging the furry tag this isnt yiff its just sad, anyways yea! one of them dies i hate it, i guess? i mean they are like. anthro birds but the writing sucks so you cant tell that well lmao, me sitting up in bed: OH BOY 3 AM, someone: dont be ridiculous whod be writing about lesbians dying at 3 am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 05:53:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12624630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeperinobeep/pseuds/beeperinobeep
Summary: HM!!!!! DEPRESSING I HATE THIS





	sing sweetly the names of our dead

**Author's Note:**

> as usual this is garbage based on my ocs bc fuck yall im my own fandom so uh. yea!! here [they](https://toyhou.se/1026098.asphodel) [are](https://toyhou.se/1024769.chamomile) lmao

Her voice was like honey before the blood choked it out.  
It was inevitable that one of them would die first, of course- they both knew it, especially given the 50-or-so age difference between the two. It’s just that neither of them really expected it to end like _this_.  
She found it kind of funny in a sick sort of way, really- of course the one with the most potential, the most vibrance, the most- well, really the better half of this relationship- was the one to die before her deserved time.  
Her voice was like honey, she thought, and so was the rest of her. The problem was that honey wasn’t supposed to rot, go bad, wither away into bits, yet here she was.  
She gave a sigh and rose from the spot she’d been sitting on on the bed, leaving a small indent in the periwinkle cashmere blankets below as she strode across the room with long, brazen legs and lightly brushed the curtains to the side with a scaly hand the color of lilacs- a bit of sunlight might help, she figured, though she knew deep down it never would. A golden streak of early morning sun flashed across the room, lighting up the bits and pieces of dust flittering around the room like pixies in a garden before it finally settled on the figure who was bundled up in the bed sheets.  
God, she could barely stand to look at her, and yet she just couldn’t take her eyes off of her, even while she was on the brink of death. Her once-voluptuous figure had been eaten away by her illness, leaving her as hardly anything but a bundle of bones held together by thin, sweaty skin hot with fever, and every time she had one of her nigh-constant chills or another bought of her terrible, wracking coughs she seemed as though she would come undone like a ball of yarn being tossed down the stairs by a careless child. The coughs were the worst part, she thought as she returned to the side of the bed, albeit this time closer to her than before- they always brought with them thick, viscous blood the color of apples and strawberries and tragic endings and bright, vibrant plumage that had once shined in the sun and the candlelight like stained glass but was now horribly, irreversibly faded by stress and sickness, and seemed to degrade her once melodious, almost sickeningly sweet voice bit by bit until she could hardly whisper, let alone sing or dump about the newest production at the theatre down the street-  
The tall, lavender figure at the bedside tightly closed her eyes for a moment, though evidently not enough to prevent a few crystal-clear tears from squeezing out and rolling softly down her cheeks onto the pale sheets below as she let out a brief, shaky sob, painting the tips of her faded feathers and the delicate folds of the fabric below like the dew on the grass outside- however, she quickly regained her composure and, using one hand to soak up the small, beady drops of moisture with a grungy teal sleeve, the other to gently dab away at a bit of drool from her ailing girlfriend’s beak with a tissue, and a third to tenderly shake her bony shoulder, woke her up.  
This was easy enough, especially given how the molten gold of the sun had now spread across her eyes, and even then she’d always been a light sleeper. A carmine eyelid rose up, just barely enough to gaze about the small bedroom she’d been contained in for the past few months with a thin, white pupil before fluttering back closed with a heave of exhaustion- though it was impossible for the other one to determine whether or not it was her being tired from the mere effort of opening an eye or just tiredness of simply being alive in her state. She gave a barely audible groan before turning away as well and as quickly as she was able, releasing another barrage of coughs and hacks into the soft, cream-colored pillow below her head and speckling it with delicate drops of bloody phlegm.  
The purple one gave another shaky breath as she opened her mouth to speak.  
“Hey, love…” she murmured as quietly as she was able, gently stroking her lover’s feathers that, despite her condition, still felt like the finest silks. She was responded to with another soft moan, though slightly less strangled this time. She briefly opened her beak to continue, but just as quickly shut it, choosing instead to nervously fiddle with the plush blankets below. What was she even supposed to say? Asking her if she felt alright was just a stupid question, and she didn’t even know when the doctor would come, if at all, so it’s not like she could make some awkward attempt at small talk and tell her that they’d be here sometime soon- they all knew she was a lost cause; hell, practically the entire town knew it at this rate. An offer of breakfast was most definitely out of the question too- hell, she could barely muster the energy to keep an eye open, much less eat more than a bite of toast.  
She instead chose to tenderly grab hold of her hand, heliotrope-colored fingers interlacing with those of pale scarlet as well as they were able to like they did years ago when everything was perfect. God, it seemed like yesterday when they first did this, after that one drunken night when they’d both confessed how they’d felt, or during their first date down at the park, where both of them had been vibrant with life and love and just general happiness, the first she’d felt in _ages_ -  
Oh, how time flies, she dully noted with a painful twinge of wistfulness; and oh, how she hated that feeling- as far as she was concerned, it did nothing but add insult to injury and, as she suddenly noticed, with a feeling of dampness forming on the hand she was resting her head on, caused her to cry like some sort of child- and in front of her own _girlfriend_ , no less.  
She clutched her lover’s hand tighter and lay down beside her, scooching herself down in between the covers and holding her in slender, wingless arms like she’d done countless times before. Her many hands clasped behind her back, pulling her ailing partner as tight to her as possible as she gently stroked her plumage in an effort to offer some sort of comfort to her as much as herself. The sickly red bird attempted to return the favor, spending what seemed like minutes mustering up the energy to raise her arms high enough to wrap them around her- and failing countless times, with them falling back onto the bed with a thump- before, with a near-silent groan, she resigned to burying her head into the plush, teal clad chest before her as well as she was able. The other one pressed her head closer as she tenderly slipped her fingers in and out between the thinning feathers on her head. Would she get consumption from this as well? Oh, most definitely, she thought, leaning her head in closer to the point of it being a borderline kiss.  
Would she care? Well, that was a different story. She figured that she’d end up killing herself after she died anyways; she might as well give the public a legitimate excuse for her doing so.  
The bed was surprisingly comfy given the fact that someone with a terminal illness had been resting there almost non-stop for the past few months, and though she hated to admit it, she was quickly succumbing to sleep. Not that it’d be a bad thing, anyways; her girlfriend had fallen back asleep quite a while ago, so it’s not like she had to get up and give her a sponge bath or feed her or anything of that sort. She snuggled deeper into the plush pillow as her eyes grew heavier than her lover’s labored breaths. What a fitting last moment together, she silently mused- her sleeping in the middle of the day as usual, with her girlfriend either on her ass about it or giving up, taking the day off, and passing out with her.  
If it weren’t for her suddenly absent breaths and the ever-growing stench of death, it’d almost feel like an average Sunday morning.  
She blearily lifted her head up from the pillow, accompanied by a groan of realization and what seemed like fear. Death. An awful scent, really, and one she could recognize like the back of her hand- it seemed to have followed her throughout her life at almost every step: that one fateful, rainy night in the dead of summer with her at the tender age of 13 surrounded by wreckage and a young, shattered family; a crisp, clear morning in autumn that began with a gunshot and blood and triumph; and now, she thought, forcing herself up to a sitting position, a meandering spring morning that never seemed to end. And now she’d have to face it yet again, because fuck her in particular apparently.  
She briefly glanced at the still-warm corpse before glancing away, expecting tears to come that never did. Even in death she looked stunning.  
She felt a sudden emptiness envelop her; an emptiness like the glass vials strewn along the oaken floor, once filled with what evidently turned out to be useless medicine; empty like the bakery down the road that hadn’t been able to be opened and tended to since late autumn and had since been looted by local delinquents looking for scraps to sell; a deep, terrible emptiness like the one that would soon afflict the ground in the cemetery as those with shovels dug tirelessly at the still-thawing ground as those who cared and even those who didn’t gathered around out of either grief or obligation or possibly even both.  
She forced herself out of bed and neatly remade the sheets around her now-ex lover- though she hated to think of her like that, for she still loved her very much so- and gave her one last, tender kiss on the head, playfully ruffling her feathers like she had so many times before, albeit this time without a scaly, flour-covered hand deftly leaping up to fix them. A few minutes were spent listlessly staring at the body- god, it hardly seemed as though she were dead, and the lanky figure standing by the bed half-expected her to leap up at any moment and dash out the door, chirping on about how late she was to open. Or did she? She really couldn’t tell anymore. She couldn’t even muster anything that resembled disbelief, or grief, or even some sort of sick happiness at the final end of her suffering. Hell, she was just barely able to feel the feeling of just...not knowing.  
There were a few metallic clacks along the floor as she listlessly shuffled across the small room, purple tail feathers trailing behind, as she grabbed a baby-blue cardigan from the floor that was much too large to fit properly- god, it even still smelled like her before she got sick- before she trudged through the house and out the door into the damp, flowery air, shoving her hands into the pockets of the sweater as she made her way to the coroner’s, a few cheerful birds fluttering through the air and singing a lively serenade for the dead.  
Under any other circumstances, it would seem like a perfect morning.  
But the perfection and joy of spring and life seemed to have been choked out by grief.


End file.
